pop song for us rejects

there's a hole in the earth

[tuesday-is-a-good-day]

“there’s no platonic explanation for this”

Well there is actually, they’re friends. They’re friends and they love each other and it doesn’t mean any less than if they were dating and they loved each other. They’re friends and that means devotion and affection and loyalty and love, and there is no point in which that love reaches a level that immediately indicates that their relationship must be romantic.

[tall]

[peterpumpkinhead]

update on my opinion regarding skynani's wu and gagaoolala

the show is queer and could've been on that platform. the only mistake was tagging it as "BL" - I rest my case!

[cyrjovie]

Contrary to popular belief, a show doesn’t have to be a bl to be queer. A show doesn't even have to have romance between two men at all to be queer. A show doesn't even have to ALLUDE to romance at all two men at all to be queer. (Just to cover everything, a show also doesn't have to allude to romance between two women to be queer.)

The point is, "queer" isn't a rigid box applying only to two men in love. "Queer" doesn't apply only to romance either. Sometimes, being queer even includes an explicit LACK of romance.

As a queer person who took seven years to become confident in my queerness because I felt like I was supposed to shove myself into a box to "count," the whole meaning behind being "queer" is that we're different from what the society thinks we ought to be. We're not "normal." And even as being queer and out becomes more common, it's STILL SOMETHING THAT MAKES US DIFFERENT. ITS STILL SOMETHING THAT CAN GET YOU OSTRACIZED FROM YOUR COMMUNITY. ITS STILL SOMETHING WE ARE HAVING TO FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO LIVE AS.

And this post is specifically about Wu. The fact that Pete and Niran aren't making out on your screen doesn't make it not queer. Trans rep? Check. A story about a boy who disappointed his grandfather because he wasn't exactly what his grandfather expected and wanted? He didn't behave how he ought? Well, that's something we in the queer community are quite familiar with. Group of outcasts coming together? I mean, come on, that's textbook queer allegory.

The point is Wu is both allegorically and straightforwardly queer, and that's NOT including the allusions to romantic goings on between Niran and Pete.

[thebroccolination]

SHE WAS ENOUGH FOR "WU" TO BE ON QUEER PLATFORM GAGA AND I WILL NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT

[janployshompoos]

Just leave it by the door.

WU | EP2

[mynorthernattitude]

and for the lady, perhaps a fking break?

[stuckinapril]

Truest thing ever unfortunately

[thebroccolination]

I've had more time to look through interfans' reactions to "Wu" getting taken off Gaga.

International fans congratulating each other and themselves on successfully carrying out "unsubscribe campaigns" that bullied a queer-owned Asian platform to remove a series that no one has seen yet is bonkers because it does have queer content. It doesn't have to be romance to be queer. Not all queer content has to be romance.

"Shadow" is also on Gaga presumably because Fluke's character, a side role, is gay. "Shadow" was also labeled "BL" and is still labeled "BL" probably to draw in BL fans who know and like Singto and Fluke from their roles in BL series, so the lack of outrage or even awareness of this exact thing happening three years ago with "Shadow" tells me this is some weird interfan grudge against SkyNani for refusing to kiss each other on camera.

Like, should "Shadow" and "Wu" have been labeled "BL"? No, obviously not. Is this the stake through the heart of all queer people that interfans are making it out to be? Also no.

Godji's character in the series is openly trans. Did anyone complaining even look into this series beyond SkyNani's casting? This is Godji's first serious role as an actress. She's almost always relegated, like many trans actors, to comic relief or MC roles. This role is a big deal and is enough for me, personally, to see "Wu" have a place on an LGBTQ+ platform.

It's not like Fluke had the main role in "Shadow"! He was also playing a queer side character!

So queer interfans saying "Wu" has No Place on a Queer Platform before they've even seen or looked into the series is breathtakingly shortsighted and petty to me as a queer nonbinary fan.

Because literally no one complaining or bullying Gaga has even seen the series yet.

What would have been so dangerous about giving this series the benefit of the doubt?

The director, Waa, is an openly gay man whose literal next project in June is a BL series. He directed "Boys in Love" and "Be My Favorite" too. How has he not earned the benefit of the doubt?

Or did no one look into that either?

Like, sure, maybe Godji's queerness isn't enough for others, but no one knows how queer the show is because it isn't out yet. "Bromance" isn't even the official term for SkyNani's brand! Which I only just found out because interfans keep repeating it as if it is. So interfans literally made up a term and then got mad at it.

EDIT: SkyNani and DewTee are called คู่หู in Thai, which translates to "close friends," which has ZERO percent of the baggage that interfans put onto them by assigning them the term "bromance." Even their concert later this year is called fucking Friendcon.

As an international queer fan, some of y'all are embarrassing me in front of my favorite director.

[genderliquidsposts]

No fr, because I'm not only seeing people still relegating this as bromance when it wasn't marketed as such, BUT I'm still seeing people praise Gaga when they BOUGHT THE SHOW and made those OG tags in the first place, AND acting like gmmtv was deliberately cooking up this massive scheme to bait queer people as if they held gaga at gunpoint and forced them to air the show. Regardless of whether u feel it should be there or not BOTH made that choice (and the cast/crew had no part in that). How anyone fell for that blatant guilt-tripping announcement is baffling. And YES, as a transmasc interfan, how disrespectful to Godji.

[genderliquidsposts]

WU EPISODE 2 SPOILERS !!!!!

Okay I guess this is a Wu fan account lmao?

So after sitting with this episode for a while, I just find it so funny that so many were calling this show 'not queer'. BESIDES Godji's casting, the mere idea of parents deciding that putting DEMON ESSENCE in their child was a more fitting solution than accepting their differences, can so clearly be taken as commentary on homophobia/transphobia AS WELL as ableism. Maybe more details will appear in future episodes, but so far, those parents are something else lmao.

Anyway, as an autistic transmasc person this spoke to me.

[peterpumpkinhead]

what we're not going to do is take a serious case of abuse and turn it into fanwars and hypervigilance over who someone is following online. what we could do is support victims and find ways to help them get the resources they need. i don't care about your fave and you liking or disliking a celebrity is not a clear diagnosis of your morality. find a shelter for people in risky situations in your region, donate, send kind words to people suffering in public and stop being a bully.

[amartworks]

I think a lot about the architecture ideas drawn by Étienne-Louis Boullée

They're sketches from the 1780s and they look like the end of the fucking universe

[peterpumpkinhead]

my two (maybe controversial) cents on the sky-nani conversation (taken directly from my own reddit comment)

The reaction against Sky–Nani seems to come from a place where the mere existence of platonic relationships in a story is seen as a threat or a slight to other representations of affection, mainly BL. Sure, platonic brotherhoods and sisterhoods, as well as subtext and ambiguity, have been used as narrative tools to evade censorship. But these artistic choices also exist on their own and have the potential to do many things, including challenging toxic masculinity and patriarchal notions of female competition.

One thing we need to take into consideration is a Western perspective that tends to view expressions of affection between people of the same gender as inherently romantic or sexual. Many cultures have normalized these interactions for generations, and they have only become more scrutinized with recent globalization. Another point is that a bromance series is not necessarily a “straight” series if there is no heterosexual romance.

I fully agree that it was a major faux pas to include Wu in GagaOOLala’s catalog and tag it as BL, though. Just terrible PR for both Sky–Nani and the platform. Also, to me Sky–Nani’s marketing feels like a pilot project: it is similar to BL, but not quite the same—the different mascots, the hyphen that a lot of people hate, etc. It feels like they are still figuring out how to navigate this space, and while they may do so clumsily at times, it certainly does not warrant this level of hate.

Saying that bromance is a “genre” historically created to suppress explicitly gay stories is... simply not true. From Holmes & Watson, Spock & Kirk (people shipped them, I think that's why fanfic became a huge thing??), Frodo and Sam, Harry and Ron... the list goes oooooon.

Shipping is also a major fan practice and does not require explicitly gay characters to exist!!! We should enjoy it for the irreverent exercise in fantasy that it is!!

Plussssss, may I add: the idea that ambiguous stories with subtext have no place in today’s society is craazy work. The consciousness of more conservative audiences is still open to negotiation and persuasion. We also need to win these people over!!! These stories can circulate more easily on mainstream platforms in countries and regions where they might otherwise be rejected!!! All these things can coexist: BL doesn't have to die for "bromance" to live. In Thailand, the evidence seems to point to an expansion in BL projects, not the other way around. Sky-Nani are well funded because they're huge, just like WilliamEst, NamtanFilm, PondPhuwin. This has a LOT more to do with sponsors than any sort of personal malice from a CEO. Capitalism does what it does, unfortunately.

And lastly (forgive me for the lenghty comment!) what does it say about us when we claim we have no interest in openly expressed platonic love between people of the same gender? Isn’t that reinforcing a very heteronormative, macho ideal, that men cannot be tender or emotionally sincere with each other without publicly defining their sexuality? What is going on with this supposedly progressive audience?

[peterpumpkinhead]

some thoughts...

I do find it very interesting that GagaOOLala has gotten a lot of heat off of its back after the Wu debacle.

I don't think Wu ever belonged on GGOOLL at all and it was a clear PR disaster for everyone involved from the jump. The wrong tags on it were even more aggravating.

But I do have to ask - why is Wu considered a straight series if there's no indication of heterosexual romance and the characters' sexuality seems quite impertinent to the plot (or what we know so far about it)?

Also - the presence of a trans actress playing one of the main characters is of no importance to any of you?

But most importantly - is everybody aware that both companies, GMM and GagaOOLala, had to agree to have the platform distribute the show and that actors, who are not in an executive production position, have nothing to do with this particular mistake?

[thebroccolination]

I promise I'm not being facetious: I genuinely don't understand the overwhelming hate for the bromance pairs, so could someone explain it to me like I'm five?

Like, as I understand it, Sky and Nani (and presumably Dew and Tee) don't want to star in BL series or market themselves as imaginary couples. They seemingly don't want to do the company-prescribed loveydovey song and dance the BL actors do, so GMMTV made them their own category with a stupid name.

I mean, is it the "bromance" descriptor people take issue with? Because, yeah, "bromance" is a ridiculous word and it does sound stupid to a lot of people (including me!), but I wouldn't consider that, like. Grounds for accusing SkyNani and DewTee themselves of queerbaiting? (becauseyoucan'tqueerbaitrealpeople)

I strongly suspect that the downfall of OhmNanon and the subsequent rabid tornado carrying around their memory served as something of a cautionary tale to everyone in that company if not the industry. Nanon also said he didn't want to do BL, and he was overridden, so I'd say it's a very good thing Sky and/or Nani put his foot down and kept it down.

Especially with GMMTV increasingly treating their BL and GL actors like circus animals, good for them for having and keeping boundaries?

…Are people just angry at life and this is how they've collectively decided to channel it?

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Wu on Gaga is everything to me ✨ People are getting mad without even have seen the show. Novel-readers previously reported the book was queer (it’s also listed as an lgbtq novel on the website I found), and people were getting mad that the series was then a bromance, as if they had already watched the series…

Now people are pressed the show’s on the lgbtq streaming platform, when it’s a “bromance.” Has anyone considered that the series with a lgbtq novel being put on the lgbtq streaming platform, might in fact be lgbtq???

I’m still not holding out hope for a SkyNani kiss (but will be pleasantly surprised if I get it), but there are so many different kinds of queer stories. I need people to remember that BL is not the end-all-be-all of lgbtq media. Sometimes fans use the word queer-baited when I think they mean BL-baited. Queer-baited means they dangled a hint of queerness to hook and reel you in without ever even letting you consume anything queer. My dears, we’re living in the queer aquarium where they pour buckets of queer food into our queer tanks everyday.

[peterpumpkinhead]

So... I wrote a *long*, but thoughtful text (I think!) about bromance, subtext, BL and SkyNani's controversy within the fandom.

Subtexto, BL e Bromance

O caso SkyNani, o Preço da Ambiguidade e o Afeto como Mercadoria

It's written in my native language (Brazilian Portuguese), but just hit the translate button and you'll be good to go. I feel like the internet discourse about these topics have been way too inflamed and shallow, so I just felt the urge to engage with them and develop a long text that could deliver the very complex feelings and thought processes I had.